The President is Not Your Father, Nor is the Government

The American Spirit I am sorry, I just have to get this off of my chest.

President Obama was in Ohio yesterday afternoon speaking at Lorain Community College with his latest theme ‘all jobs all the time.’ While I have no problem with the President speaking about jobs what continues to shock me is the citizenry reaction and expectation.

Most of the local TV networks the day before had multiple interview spots with the citizens of Lorain County which has been struggling for at least a decade with job losses, you know auto plants, steel mills, etc. What continues to frustrate me is how many people actually expect the President to be able to create a job for them, he will make it better is what they feel.

When did this patriarchal (someone who is the father figure and can fix all things) orientation begin? When did people stop taking personal responsibility for themselves and expect a politician to magically out of thin air give them a job. Maybe it is the fact that the government has branded itself as the solver of all problems, the caregiver to all that created the expectation.

But hold on, I know life is difficult for many people, I just helped feed a hundred families at church today and many of those don’t have the physical or mental capacity to be gainfully employed. I understand and have compassion for all humans but I pray they will take self-responsibility for their situation and do what they can to make it better and not rely on the ‘hope’ that our government will pull off a miracle for them.

Ok, I feel better now, thanks for listening. I have complete faith and ultimately know that what will make this economy better (we all act as if this has not happened before) is what many belittle today, the American Spirit. There are millions of individuals going to school to learn new skills, millions more looking for a way to start their own business, millions are working hard to find a job and millions more working even harder at the job they currently have.

Making our lives better happens one person at a time, repeated millions of times.

4:29 am | SteveRucinski | No Comments »

We Want a Relationship and a Process, Not Just a Product

I had a meeting with a business prospect today and this is one statement that was made during the 90 minute conversation. I thought I was dreaming.

This is a public sector (Government) organization so this statement and the entire dialog felt very unusual. I have been saying in most of my client meetings lately that they should forget about the technology and work on the vision of what you want for your organization. There are technologies off-the-shelf or with minimal development to perform almost any function that you could dream up. (No flying cars yet though)

Of course the behavior of depending on the technology features has been created by technology companies, we will demo clients to death, we are proud of our technology, when that happens long enough users start believing that the only thing that can be done is what is seen within the demo’ed technology. Unfortunately the feature set and belief is coming from a minority of companies, those big ones with big sales teams, big channels and big marketing budgets.

Those of us who have worked within the community of smaller tech companies know better, we also have great technology, with advanced features and at less cost, we just can’t afford to tell anyone. What this forces us to do is to listen deeply to each customer and build just what they need, do that long enough and continously and you will have a great piece of technology.

Like the client in the meeting today the one thing smaller tech companies do is build strong relationships, we have to and we like to, we like to solve problems over time and usually we have very efficient and effective processes for doing so. Smaller firms typically have less turnover of team members which is critical to evolving a relationship.

So I have two wishes: I wish all prospects would look to buy relationships and process and that together we would spend time on vision and dreams and set aside for a bit the tech demos and features.

3:01 pm | SteveRucinski | No Comments »

Distracted…is a Dark Age Coming?

Twitter ImageryI have been reading the book by Maggie Jackson titled “Distracted, The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.”

While the title peaks my curiosity the idea of a ‘Dark Age’ really gives me pause. As the title states the books major premise is that our instant message, twittermania and the ever faster pace of new communication modalities is crowding out our ability to ‘go deep’ on anything, human relationships included.

Here are a few of the questions she asks and attempts to answer:

Does intimacy survive a seemingly limitless realm of infinite prospects?

How does lives of perpetual movement shape our attachments to each other and change our experience of place?

My comments: First I think we need to keep in mind that only about one-sixth of the world’s population even has internet access, a smaller number have cellphones, an even smaller number use Twitter and many of the other technologies she discusses to make her point. So I caution the reader from joining in with some of the broad generalizations that are made in the book.

I think the author does a great job at making some surprising historical analogies to today’s technology landscape, like the stories of how early telegraph operators use to develop long distance love relationships with the new tool of which all the operators could monitor as well. Sound familiar?

Now to the ‘Dark Ages’ term. I am a half-full person so I have to work hard to see anything as only half-empty or dark without seeing the good and positive aspects of a technology. Of course I am not a culturalist or studier of the human condition.

I think there are many other signs and risks we are in a ‘Dark Age’ like starvation, wars, AIDS, Malaria, terrorism, self-explosion, child abuse, pedophilia, poverty, in fact we may already have ‘hell’ on earth without going anywhere.

Anyway, I suggest reading the book if you have an interest, it will provide a good snapshot of the author’s opinion of the impact of current technologies AND a historical perspective and even possibly help in learning to operate in today’s world.

12:13 pm | SteveRucinski | No Comments »